Real World Lab - The Capital Region of Denmark

Seeking to improve future governance and access to data for climate emergencies

On the 3rd of March, 2023 the first ‘Real World Lab’ of the DIRECTED Project took place, led by the Capital Region of Denmark and the Danish Technical University (DTU) in Hillerød, Denmark. The Lab brought together practitioners, primarily from local municipalities and emergency services in the region, for the first of a range of meetings over the next four years. The meetings will assist in their ability to improve preparation and response to extreme climate events by improving governance systems and providing tailored information to the many actors involved in both emergency response efforts and long-term climate adaptation. The DIRECTED partnership seeks to develop a clear and manageable climate emergencies governance system and bring together interoperable disaster forecasting, climate change risk assessment and adaptation planning tools into one easily usable ‘Data Fabric’ that will enable the necessary information getting into the hands of multiple local stakeholders. Participants in the Lab will collaborate to share knowledge on dealing with and planning for extreme climate events, and to co-produce and test a range of decision support tools.

The Lab is in response to extreme events such as the 2013, Storm Bodil (also known as Storm Xavier, Sinterklaasstorm and Sven) that caused the highest wind gusts ever recorded in Denmark hitting 135 – 153 km/h on the North Atlantic Coast and killing one woman in Denmark and 19 people across Europe. It caused severe damage across the region resulting from wind damage, severe flooding and coastal storm surges. Insurance companies across Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Germany reported insured losses of €680 million.  This event and the potential for other extreme events in the future are driving the partnership to focus on how we might reduce casualties, damage and losses in the future. The ‘Real World Lab’ approach will help local authorities and first responders to better plan for extreme climate events, such as Storm Bodil and assist in the prevention, adaptation and resilience planning at municipality level.
Emilie Rønde Nielsen, Special Consultant for Mobility, Climate, Innovation & Education, at the Capital Region Denmark said “The workshop highlighted the challenges of planning and communicating in an era of climate change uncertainty, both when it comes to extreme climate events but also in terms of longer-term climate change adaptation. Thanks to the committed participants, we gained a detailed insight into the complexities of these processes, as well as an insight into the cross-sectional approach that is needed to overcome silos and enable interoperability.”

What is a Real World Lab?

Real World Labs create collaborative environments for learning and innovation through co-production workshops, demonstrations and training, as well as promoting multi-level collaborative risk governance among actors managing disaster risk and climate adaptation. They seek to work with a range of stakeholders from all levels of governance, including representatives from government, academia, industry and civil society to understand the information needs and co-produce solutions, capturing synergies across Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation, and strengthening resilience against climate change, extreme weather and multi-risk events.

Results of the First Real World Lab

The municipality officers, emergency responders, The Danish Emergency Management and Region Zealand who attended the event worked on a range of exercises enabling stakeholders to share their experiences, issues and concerns on how things had worked in the past and what they felt was needed to improve the current working systems in relation to managing extreme events. Three main themes emerged.

Citizen Responsibility

There was a desire for a better understanding and management of citizen responsibility in extreme events. For example, understanding how to prepare and behave during an event and emergency response volunteer management.

Emilie Rønde Nielsen, Special Consultant for Mobility, Climate, Innovation & Education, at the Capital Region Denmark said “The workshop highlighted the challenges of planning and communicating in an era of climate change uncertainty, both when it comes to extreme climate events but also in terms of longer-term climate change adaptation. Thanks to the committed participants, we gained a detailed insight into the complexities of these processes, as well as an insight into the cross-sectional approach that is needed to overcome silos and enable interoperability.”

Communications and Co-ordination

Broadly, it was felt that the improvements of communication systems should be a priority. Although municipalities and emergency responders are very busy and cooperation between them is going well, they expressed a clear need for higher political focus and allocation of resources. Secondly, they felt that municipalities should improve cross boundary interactions, although it appeared emergency services were more connected across boundaries. There was also a great wish for a common and shared platform for communication and data, so that all actors involved in an extreme weather event can find the same information in just one place.

Data and Simulation

Experiences were relayed on the low accuracy of some of the tools being used for flood prediction, in particular flood levels, causing an under-estimate of the water levels, and in some cases an over-estimate triggering non-essential road closures and health sector responses. Stakeholders expressed an interest in a higher alignment of data between the municipalities and emergency managements, as well as better opportunities to use each other’s measuring stations. They also wanted to know more about and how to access the types and range of tools available to assist both forecasting and adaptation planning, as well as clear national recommendations on which climate scenarios to use. Importantly, stakeholders expressed a desire to work on the simulation of emergency events, as well as work more on managed retreat options in terms of cost/benefit analysis of flood prevention measures.

The meeting ended with participants being asked who else should be invited to be involved in the DIRECTED work. The municipality and emergency responder representatives at the event suggested that national actors including the Hydro-met agency, regional actors, including health care system providers, Danish Road Directorate, dike groups, utility companies, the Homeguard, other municipalities and emergency management agencies, the police, municipality GIS experts and municipality communication staff, as well as community level emergency management volunteers and citizens involved in climate adaptation activity should be invited to participate in future events.  Clearly, this list of stakeholders shows the complexity of climate emergency management, but the DIRECTED Project hope through the management of this complexity through improving governance systems, making climate data and models more interoperable to enable local use and providing innovative data and communication through a ‘Data Fabric’, the sharing of data and information will begin to make local climate emergency management fit for the climate change challenges ahead.

For more information about the Capital Region, Denmark, Real World Lab please contact:

Emilie Rønde, Specialconsultant – emilie.roende.nielsen@regionh.dk or

Amalie Vestergaard Laursen, Consultant – amalie.laursen@regionh.dk

For any further information about the Project, please contact: info@directedproject.eu

About this Project:
[This project is an Innovation Action under the Civil Security for Society, Disaster-Resilient Societies programme of the Horizon Europe funded by the European Union. Project details and a full list of participant organisations can be found on the link: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101073978. Associate partners SEI Oxford and Oasis Hub are funded by Innovate UK and ETH Zurich is funded by The State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI), Switzerland]

by Tracy Irvine, Oasis Hub Ltd